Torchlight Preview

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Xbox Live finds a loot-hording gem from the mines of PC gaming.

By Arthur Gies

I played Diablo on the Playstation.

Sure, I poured hours into Diablo 2 and Lord of Destruction on the PC a few years later, but my first exposure to Diablo's style of loot grinding and dungeon crawling came from my experience with the series on console. Even though I felt the game translated remarkably well to a controller, we haven't really seen a comparable game released on console since, but that's all set to change next month when 2009's sleeper hit Torchlight will jump to Xbox Live Arcade with an exclusive console optimized version of the game.

If you're aren't hip to Torchlight, here's a quick rundown. As one of three characters, you'll explore the mines of Torchlight slaying monsters and grabbing gold and loot as you collect weapon sets, craft items, and feed your pet special fish to turn it into a powerful ally in the fight against evil, or large creatures that can't speak intelligibly at least. Torchlight's march to PC's in 2009 was long and full of hiccups better explained elsewhere, but it was developed by alumni from Blizzard's Diablo and Diablo II team, and it showed. In my humble estimation, Torchlight is the best loot-hoarding dungeon crawler of its type since Diablo II's Lord of Destruction expansion launched in 2001.

Of course, Torchlight was a PC game through and through, as players clicked their way around the world, and on enemies, and, well, everything, actually. Given Torchlight's PC heritage, there are two immediate hurdles for Runic in the transition to the Xbox 360: the controls, and the menus. From my time with the game this week, I'm fairly optimistic for both.

Obviously, the biggest difference is direct control of your character via the analog stick, but Runic has made some subtle but important changes to the game itself to make Torchlight work on a controller. For example, melee attacks actually carry your character forward a few steps, rather than staying in place as he/she would on the PC. This helps add a better sense of immediacy in melee combat in Torchlight XBLA.

As important is the hotkey system Runic has implemented for Torchlight. Skills can be mapped to the left and right triggers and the B and Y buttons, allowing for easy access to a number of combat abilities for each class. While it means that players will have less immediate access to all of their abilities, I did find in my brief time playing that it was easier to juggle several powers at once effectively with the controller than it was with function keys or a scroll wheel.

Interface-wise, Torchlight XBLA still has some ground to make up. At this stage, the menu system works, and, say, adding skill points and ranks to abilities is simple, and identifying items is as easy as hitting the A button. However (and you knew that was lurking in there somewhere) there are quite a few menu pages, which you switch between using the triggers, and sub-pages, which you navigate using the left and right bumpers, and you navigate menu sections using the analog stick. This sounds confusing because it is. I still hadn't gotten my head quite around it by the end of my half hour or so with the game. I imagine it could become workable after more time, but we'll just have to see.

Otherwise though, the whole Xbox Live Arcade experience still felt distinctly Torchlight. The game looks great and runs pretty well, and the forward facing interface is unobtrusive and easy to take in at a glance (it's especially nice having healing and mana potions on the left and right bumpers respectively). Inventory management has been simplified without limiting it. Meanwhile, the XBLA version gets a new pet, a bizarre jabberwocky-like dragon creature, and Runic have brought some rare item sets and crafting options over from the in-development for PC Torchlight 2. Sadly, Torchlight is still a single-player only affair, but for 1200 points, Torchlight still looks to offer an enormous amount of game time for the price. If Runic can iron out some minor performance hiccups in the game, Torchlight for XBLA could be pretty easy to recommend when it comes out in just just a few weeks.